"God created us as beautiful, indeed in his own image and likeness, but through sin and the ministrations of the devil, we descended into dysfunction, and our beauty was covered over. . . [Then] the Prince of Peace, the Son of God, in marrying the human race, lifted us up out of our lowliness and bestowed upon us all of his own benefits and dignity."

"The Christian becomes most fully herself or himself inasmuch as there is a will to be conformed to Christ in suffering and death. Martyrdom, like Baptism, accomplishes a transformation of the recipient into an “alter Christus”—another Christ."

And so instead of conflict, they sought community. In place of work done for the sake of status and self- promotion, they sought work for the sake of goodness and truth. Instead of frittering away time worrying and fretting, they surrendered their hours, their days, their weeks, their years to prayer.

“'My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.'” (Psalm 45:1). The first wrought destruction; the second wrote the divine law. So one was a sword and the other a pen—not by its own nature, but by the choice of those who used it."

"When [Margaret] was silent, her silence was filled with good thoughts. So thoroughly did her outward bearing correspond with the staidness of her character that it seemed as if she has been born the pattern of a virtuous life." (Turgot, St. Margaret's confessor).

"'Mary is full of grace, but full for you and for me; she is a vessel of God’s overflowing and particular love for all mankind, and for each man and woman'....Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort wrote, 'She is an echo of God, speaking and repeating only God. If you say ‘Mary’ she says ‘God’.”